Twitter Founder Wants to Make Service More Mainstream

Making Twitter more useful for the average person — that’s Jack Dorsey’s first challenge as he returns to the company he founded, he said Tuesday.

Bloomberg News

Jack Dorsey in October

“We have a lot of mainstream awareness, but mainstream relevancy is still a challenge,” he said during a discussion at Columbia University’s Journalism School Tuesday. Mr. Dorsey, who came up with the idea for Twitter, said Monday that he is returning to be product chief of the company; on Tuesday he outlined more about his plans for the next few months.

Mr. Dorsey said Twitter could make it easier for people to navigate the technology and do a better job of catering to people who use Twitter to get information rather than relay their own thoughts.

The best part about Twitter is that it allows you to do things like following “what’s happening in Egypt right now. That’s the value, not the brand ‘Twitter.’ So we need to refocus on that value,” he said. “That’s my goal in the next few months.”

The return of Mr. Dorsey marks an important change at the top of the company, which has grown rapidly in the past couple of years but is still working out the details of its fledgling business model. Mr. Dorsey was replaced in 2008 as CEO by another co-founder, Evan Williams. Mr. Williams stepped down in October and was replaced by current CEO Dick Costolo.

One big question as Twitter builds out its service: What will happen to the programmers who built tools like Tweetdeck and smartphone apps for the service? In the past few months, Twitter has either purchased or built its own products for the iPhone and other devices and raised questions about the future of the “ecosystem” that has built up around it.

Mr. Dorsey echoed earlier comments by Twitter, saying it would be better for developers to move beyond “basic” Twitter services. “It’s up to any good platform company … to really guide its developers in the right way, to inspire them to create interesting and useful applications,” he said.

What does he want to see from Twitter developers? Mr. Dorsey says he has “no idea,” but that more tools that combine information from Twitter with other services would be a good place to start.

“The interesting products out on the Internet aren’t building significantly new technologies. They’re combining technologies,” he said.

Mr. Dorsey is going to be balancing his duties at Twitter with those at his new company, Square, an electronics-payment firm that lets small business accept credit-card payments with smartphones.

“I live across street from Square, and Square is two blocks from Twitter,” he said. “I live and breathe these companies.” His break from Twitter to build Square allowed him to learn how to build products that are “approachable to consumers,” which is what he now plans to do at Twitter.

“You have a very small window in which to gain leverage” when building a start-up, he said. “We need to push hard with both companies.”

Comments (4 of 4)

What should Twitter do to improve? I use Twitter to get and pass on information and what I'd like is 1) be able to make more than 20 lists, 2) be able to have more than 500 tweeters in a list, 3) be able to tag tweets in a meta way, i.e. not with #hashtags, which take up part of the 140 characters and can only be assigned by the tweeter, 4) be able to publicly block tweeters and give a public reason why I'm blocking them (e.g. I block anyone who posts location info, which I do not care about and is spam to me).

7:50 am March 30, 2011

B.E.N wrote:

Most deff a more accurate system

6:23 am March 30, 2011

kamana kapu wrote:

I can't figure out exactly what Twitter is for. It appears to me that the site allows one to comment on any subject at any time. How do I determine exactly what Twitter is for, what dose it do?

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